Commenting on clips from the episode showing former home loan underwriters explaining how they would laugh as they pushed through mortgages that were too expensive for the borrowers, Smith said this type of behavior was “very frequent and common.”

“There are lawsuits that name 35 — easily 36, 37 — of these kind of testimonies,” Smith told HuffPost Live host Jacob Soboroff. “And these guys are joking about it at this point, but of course it’s not really funny in the end because it all resulted in the collapse of 2008, a million people losing their houses, many people out of work and businesses seeing demand sink.”

“It was like a party,” one former loan underwriter tells Frontline’s” Martin Smith. “We were getting through these loans as quick as we can. They were not being looked at like they should’ve been looked at.”

3 Responses to “Frontline: Too big to jail?”

Ever since the end of Glass-Steagal banks have been exploring every option to reduce lending standards, in the name of productivity. If you don’t have to look at anything you can say yes much more often in any given work day.